


Take Care

by heli0s



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-21 20:29:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8259616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heli0s/pseuds/heli0s
Summary: Somewhere in the back of his mind, Elliot entertained the possibility of having a friend. A friend who wasn't Angela, a friend who was just his. When someone moves a few doors down from him, the months that pass between them, he hopes he'll never lose.Elliot/Reader





	1. February 1

February 1st

 _Elliot_  
He could hear a faint voice vaguely in his ear, as if it belonged to a tiny fly, buzzing in the distance.  
_Elliot_

Or perhaps a person was whispering it, across a lake, shrouded in fog and mist. He liked that better than an insect, anyway. Then at least he could pretend that perhaps it was a friend. Elliot peered into the haze, seeing the particles of water rising and falling, billowing in clouds.

 **Hello**. He heard himself calling out to it. **Who are you?**  
He felt like smiling as he peered forward.

_Where are you, Elliot?_

Didn’t they know? Elliot wondered, looking around the muddiness. They were at the lake, together. _Where are you Elliot?_ Slowly, he turned his head and the darkness seemed to ripple yet remain still. Black so deep it became blue. The disembodied voice seemed to be floating now, and there was an echo all around him as it grew louder and louder, vibrating and urgent.

_Where did you go?_

Looking across once more, he saw the clouds separate and disentangle from itself. There was a shadow in-between the mist. Elliot squinted, seeing a familiar figure in his hoodie with hollowed eyes and a clenched jaw. Suddenly his smile faded as thunder roared inside of him. Elliot gazed upon his own gaunt face. His cheeks were sunken in. His lips cracked dry. He was swaying, unable to steady his own frame. The drumming grew in his ears, louder and louder. Roaring waves were crashing! _Elliot_! It screamed. _Elliot! Elliot!_

 _He_ was screaming.

“Elliot,”

He blinked and found himself transported onto someone’s bed. His own, actually. His thin legs hung off the side as he sat on the edge. He was clutching to his sheets absentmindedly. Next to him was a warm dip.

“You’re doing it again,”

It wasn’t like the way most people would say it, he pondered, usually sharp like a knife poking holes into his thoughts. This was more like a reminder, like your dad putting his hand on your shoulder when you forgot your lunch in the morning.

“Okay.” He knew as soon as it said it, it wasn’t the right thing. He could feel his face freeze, locked in that rigid combination of wide-open eyes and slack-jaw that he so often resorted to. The bed shifted as his companion stood up. The look upon her face was a gaze of both defeat and worry, and he wanted so desperately to shut his mouth forever. Softly, she padded across the room to the monitor propped up on books. He looked on at the feet tapping impatiently, the legs shooting upwards covered in warm knitted socks. He looked at her long fingers, one hand moving his mouse restlessly, the other clenched into a tight fist.

Elliot pressed his dry lips together and mimicked the action. It felt good. He imaged it was his own neck in his hand. Yeah, he could see why she was holding so tightly her knuckles turned white.

“I’m sorry,” he said,  
“For what…” He could hear the disappointment rising in her, glowing inside of her chest with every breath. He looked at her mouth, lips parted into an upside down crescent. How often did he see her looking at him like this?

“I made you upset again.” His eyes felt dry, as if he hadn’t blinked in minutes. Maybe he hadn’t, sometimes he didn’t know where to look at people when he talked to them, and he would just forget to.

She crossed the room and he could feel himself jerk back. She paused as well, seeing his reaction. _Shit_ , Elliot thought, he shouldn’t have done that, but sometimes he couldn’t control his body, it was involuntary. She was going to get too close again.

“I’m not upset. It’s okay, Elliot.”

_______ picked up her bag at the foot of his bed. With every step she took to the door, he felt the mist crawl back into the empty room, filling every nook. The lake pooled at his feet until he was floating alone on the mattress in a pool of ink. When she slipped out the door and the familiar latch clicked noisily, her voice echoed in the darkness around him.

“Take care, Elliot,”

Across the lake, she was standing there, foot tapping. He couldn’t look at her. He wished, this time, that it was the disembodied voice of a fly buzzing away instead.


	2. October 4

October 4th

Four months ago, Elliot woke up on a day off to the sound of scuffling in the hallway. It was early Saturday morning and the light coming through his window suggested it might have been 9, maybe 10. He heard a soft grunt and a whine and the door shutting outside. He had learned to ignore all the noises in this complex, if he didn’t, it’d only make the nights worse than they already were. Instead, he stared at the ceiling for another 15 minutes before getting up and starting his morning routine- which only consisted of showering and brushing his teeth. What else was there to do? The days when he didn’t have work were even more bleak- at least going in to AllSafe meant that he could turn off the part of his brain that craved human affection for at least 8 hours. If he was lucky, sometimes 12.

Elliot looked at himself in the mirror as he zipped his hoodie up. He had a meeting with Krista in about an hour. He’d walk down the street and get a hot dog and cram it down his throat as he’d sit in the subway then wash it down with 1,000 empty calories of corn syrup. Just an average day for your New Yorker, he thought bitterly.

Walking out the door, he turned to lock the knob. When the key slipped in, a click caught his attention. The door he heard earlier opening and closing, three down from him, opened to reveal a girl possibly around his age shuffling out into the hallway. When she saw him staring, her eyes grew wide.

In an instant, she had disappeared back inside.

He’d never seen her before; she must have been the one moving in this morning.

He paused a few steps away from the stairs, trying to imagine the kind of person on the other side of the door. Maybe she was sick. Maybe he should check on her. Or maybe she was just a druggie.

Elliot looked at his phone, the time on it blinking at him that he’ll be late to Krista’s appointment if he keeps having these conversations to himself. The daily grind of eating and shitting was calling to him. Elliot continued onward down the stairs, feeling a twinge in the back of his eyes.

 

-

 

 He had done it again. Elliot found himself at the front of his building near midnight. The last thing he remembered was getting on the subway with a hot dog and a soda. He racked his brain for any memory of coming to Krista’s office, seeing her face, sitting there for an hour and saying nothing to her, but he couldn’t find any threads to even begin pulling at. All he knew was that he was back home, his left hand faintly smelling like mustard. He looked at it now, turning it back and forth as if it could give him the last 12 hours.

Elliot reached into his hoodie for a cigarette and realized that his hand had been shaking this whole time. The stick wobbled between his fingers as he fumbled with his lighter. _Shit, shit, shit, shit_.

“Hey,” a voice came from beside him, “Hey, I got you,”

Someone grabbed the stick from him and he could hear the grinding lighter wheel strike a flame. The tobacco caught on fire and from the other end of the filter, a sharp intake of air caused the leaves to singe.

Elliot took the cigarette from her, inhaling deeply three times before catching himself against the railing of the steps. He sat down and heard the girl follow him on the other side. The nicotine blanketed his frantic mind.

“Th-thanks,” he muttered, pulling the hood even further down on his face. He didn’t have to look at her to know that it was the neighbor from earlier this morning. He could smell the same shampoo on her that faintly lingered in the hallway as he passed.

She stood and began to walk a few steps up, “You’re welcome,” then she paused, unsure of what to say next, “Are… are you okay?”

Elliot turned around. Even from this angle above him, she looked small. The wind scattered her hair around her face, and the porch light above her head made the strands look like a halo unraveling. Her eyes, resting beneath harsh shadows, seemed soft.

“I… don’t… know,” he said finally.

She grimaced, chewing on her bottom lip pensively for a few seconds, “I just saw you out here and, I don’t know, got worried,”

“What do you mean….?”

If it was even possible, her grimace grew deeper into her face and settled there. “You’ve been standing here for almost two hours.”

 

 

He didn’t know why, but for some reason he followed her up the stairs as she lead him to his apartment- as if he had forgotten entirely where he lived. She stopped when she got to the door and turned to look at him, cigarette hanging from his mouth.

“Oh, shit, I thought you put this out before we got here,” she pulled it from his lips, the edges of the paper peeling off some skin as it went. Elliot licked the stinging away.

“Do you… do you have your keys?”

He blinked, quickly digging into his pockets. In his left one was the familiar smooth edges of his phone, his wallet was in the back right pocket, and, ah, there it was. Elliot fished out the ring of keys from his right pocket and gave the girl a weak smile, “Got it,”

She nodded and mouthed an affirmation before turning and going towards her own door. She pressed the key into the lock and turned back to look at him, still standing there in his black hoodie and jeans, staring at her.

Elliot’s eyes darted around the hallway. He swallowed. Was he supposed to thank her? He clutched tightly onto his keys, the ridges of the metal digging into his palm. She was obviously expecting a thank you, idiot, he wanted to yell. But before he could say anything, she had already opened the door. Sending a half-smile his way, she disappeared inside the dark room.

Elliot was standing alone again.


	3. October 11/February 16

October 11th

“Let’s talk about your social life,” Krista urged.   
_She was returning to her cycle, social life, work, health, delusions, and medication,_ Elliot thought lazily rolling his eyes over to the brooch on her vest. The medication conversation was cut short by his daydreaming again, and Krista was growing frustrated…. again. Elliot was sure she’d cut him off any day now, request him to be transferred out, maybe.

“It’s…. lively…”

“Our last session, you mentioned that you had a new neighbor,”

He had forgotten. Last week was the day he lost 12 hours, whatever he said to Krista, only she knew at this point. Elliot forced a smile, _calm down_ , he urged himself, _don’t let her know you forgot. She’ll probably freak out, blame herself, up your pills, up her own pills, shit._

“Yes. Her name is….” He paused, “Um. She- she has, she has….” He was at a loss for words. He had no idea what her name was, or what she did, he only knew that she lived three doors from him and pulled a lit cigarette out of his mouth and walked him up the stairs like a child to his own door.

“She has?” Krista hung onto every word excitedly, this was the most Elliot had opened up to her in weeks. “What does she have, Elliot? A pet?”

“She has…., she has hair…..”

Elliot could see the brightening light in Krista’s eyes shut off completely. She took a deep breath and exhaled as if someone was squeezing the life out of her. Perhaps he was the one doing that. The woman across from him splayed her hands out on the armrest of the sofa and leaned forward. Her silver necklace fell out of her shirt and dangled in the air, back and forth like a pendulum. Elliot counted the times it swayed.

1

2

3

“Elliot. You need to make attachments to the real world, discover tangible facts about the people around you, explore their identities, maybe you can find yourself as well.” She grabbed the swinging pendant and tucked it back inside.

 _I don’t know how to talk to people, Krista._ He wanted to say, he wanted to just tell her that every time he looked at someone in the eye- on the rare occasions that he could, he felt nothing more than the screaming wail of sirens urging him to run. _What do I make attachments to? Things that can attach can un-attach. What can entangle can disentangle. What do normal people do when unpredictability takes over and their happy schedule of having a friend crumbles into “unliked” photos on Facebook._

_What can I find in them that I can’t find online, in the shallow, mindless, spam of their feeds and dashboards, in their browser history, in their electronic footprint?_

The things he knew about Krista would make her jump from the highest building she could get atop of.

Instead, Elliot smiled.

“Okay.”

* * *

 

February 16th

________ was closing the bar at Giovanni’s tonight. She checked the analog clock on the opposite wall as the ornate second hand slid slowly over swirling silver numbers. Last call was 30 minutes ago, and she was cleaning up and taking inventory, counting her tips, crossing her t’s and dotting her i’s so that she could go home without incident.

She sighed, wiping the lip of bottle after bottle. It was sad that the part of her day she looked forward to the most was putting in earplugs at 4 am and smoking a joint alone in bed. Life was simple. Stupid, boring, but at last, it was simple…. And that was what she had hoped for the most.

_______ slipped her name tag in the coat pocket of her blazer and punched out on the monitor, grabbing her coat and waving goodbye to anyone still unfortunate enough to remain behind. Out of habit, she kept her hand pressed tightly on her left side pocket with her tips. Bringing home $250 on a Thursday wasn’t bad at all, she mused. It did help that the second bartender who usually worked with her called in sick and no one could cover. Not that she loved working the bar by herself all night, but it sure did have its perks.

Stepping out of the taxi after paying, she made her way up the steps and stairs. Her muscles were sore and tired from standing for 8 hours, and she was a little embarrassed to be so excited to fall backwards into a comforter. She imagined hitting the back of her head on her favorite pillow, taking off her clothes and snuggling inside a warm cocoon of heavy winter blankets. It was going to snow again tonight. It’ll be perfect.

Suddenly, she came to a screeching halt.

At her door, slumped over in nothing but sweats and a half-zipped hoodie was Elliot Alderson.

“God!” She whispered, jamming her key into the lock and throwing the rickety door open. She grabbed Elliot under his arms and hauled him as much as she could. Even though Elliot wasn’t a large man in the first place, ______ wasn’t particularly a large woman, either. “Elliot, get up! Come on!” His head lolled over to one side. He had been crying again. His puffy eyes swelled angrily with red patches and his bottom lip had been chewed nearly into shreds.

Elliot pulled himself up against the wall, “I-I’m sorry,” he muttered incoherently, “I sh-shouldn’t be here,”

“Get inside my apartment right now, Elliot. You’re going to wake everyone up,”

He fell over onto her side, limp against her arm. He knew he must have looked pathetic; a grown man nearly in his 30s, in a heap outside of someone’s door at 4 in the morning, it was more than embarrassing. But he had felt it coming again, the longing for nothing but darkness. Now he just felt euphoric. He was so happy to see her.

She kicked the door behind her and pushed him onto her bed. _Huh, this is what her apartment looks like._ Elliot thought, looking around and trying to retain as much as his brain would allow him to. _I’ve never seen the inside of it- she doesn’t take a lot of pictures of it on her accounts either. Did she paint these? Wow there’s a lot of color. Her bed… is so comfy._

Across the room, ______ took off her winter coat and hung it on the back of a chair. When Elliot rolled on his side, he could barely see her. When she flipped on the lamp next to him, he shut his eyes and buried himself deeper into the comforter. Elliot sighed as he smelled her pillow underneath him, it was sweet, clean, like hair right after a shower with just a hint of must. He loved this smell- it was like her, when she’d run past him in the hallway, on her way to a late shift.

 _Bye, Elliot!_ She’d call after him, laughing, _Take care of yourself!_

“Bye…. Elliot,” he groaned, “Take care… of yourself,”

The pillow he spoke into was unceremoniously snatched out from underneath him, and Elliot’s head dropped suddenly into the bedsheet beneath. A hand reached into his hoodie and pressed against his forehead, turning his face over. ________ leaned in, scrutinizing his eyes. The hair that was previously in a ponytail was now loose around her shoulders, spilling over to tickle his face. Elliot wanted to giggle.

“Are you fucking high!?” ______ shouted in a whisper. “Elliot, are you fucking high right now?” She grabbed his face with one hand and turned him over, left and right, inspecting his features.

He couldn’t help but laugh. _It was just morphine and estacy, _____,_ he wanted to say, but she was moving him so quickly the room was spinning into the fastest carnival ride he’d ever experienced. He could hear her groan as she stepped away from the bed, she was breathing hard, grabbing at her hair in frustration. Elliot watched her kick off her shoes to the side, rolling over to the edge of the bed and lying on his stomach, he found himself intrigued with her toes, the smallest one tinged pink from being compressed in heels all day.

“I was worried about you, Elliot.” ______ was tapping her foot rhythmically, something Elliot knew she did when she was upset. Her voice was sharp and it rained down like a hailstorm from above. “I was really worried!” The hail pattered against the back of Elliot’s hoodie as he examined the tufts of carpet in-between each of her toes as they came into contact.

“You were crying all night again, weren’t you?” He saw her feet bend and tuck underneath her legs. Knees met the floor as she kneeled down to his level. Her hands, which were flat against her knees, came to wrap around the back of his head, peeling the dark hood off. Elliot shuddered, the way she slid her palms over his ears sent a chill down his spine. She rested them on his scalp, running her thumbs in circles on his temple. “You can’t just let yourself get to this point and do morphine every time, Elliot,” she whispered, “You have to keep talking to your therapist, you have to keep trying your best,”

He didn’t want to listen anymore. Shaking her hands off him, Elliot turned his head to press one ear to the mattress. _______ moved closer, placing her head down on its side too, so that they were looking at each other upside down. From this angle, she could see the veins in his eyes crawling into their corners, his dilated pupils, his tender nose, probably from wiping it on the back of his sleeve over and over again. He could see her tear ducts. He could see all of _her_ eyelashes, some stuck together from the mascara she wore. He wanted to fall into all of the colors of her eyes.

They stayed that way for how long, Elliot didn’t know. He could only feel the calm taking over him again, the mania settling and giving way to peace, the sleep crawling up behind his neck to entomb him in its arms. His eyelids felt like weights as he tried to keep them open. Every blink felt like a war. All he wanted to do was look at her. As his vision unfocused, he could see the outline of _________’s hair, even with all her features blurred, the lamp glow behind her cast a halo.

Even under the harsh shadows, her face was soft.


	4. February 16

February 16- 7 AM

Elliot stirred.

Last night he dreamed about standing in a cold room full of people. There was a spotlight on him as he cried while the vacant faces only stared and said nothing. Pressing a hand to his head, Elliot cursed at himself. All he wanted was to feel as good as he did yesterday after snorting that line of morphine. As soon as it hit, he was skipping through a field of flowers, throwing open his door, and greeting the wide open world full of opportunities of happiness. He needed the Suboxone, another night of skipping through a field of flowers was going to fuck him up big time.

 _Shit_.

He froze. After skipping through a field of flowers, he obviously skipped somewhere else too. It wasn’t light out yet, but he knew the strangeness of someone else’s home. These sheets weren’t his. This ceiling wasn’t his. The pillow underneath his head was much more comfortable than --- _Where the fuck are my clothes?_ He screwed his eyes shut, every second passing was a million years of horrible possibilities dawning on him. _I’m in her apartment. I can smell her hair, I can hear her breathe... this is crazy. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. F---_

“Stop thinking.”

Elliot’s heart stopped beating in his chest. He let out a quivering breath that he wasn’t aware he had been holding. It rattled on the way out through his teeth.

“I can hear you thinking. It’s very loud.”

He was too scared to move. It must have been one of those perfectly scripted sitcom moments where the camera pans backwards toward the ceiling to reveal the whole bed. Elliot would be there, shirtless, the sheets covering just enough of his lower body to remain television acceptable. ______ would be on his left, also covered with the sheet, but somehow it’s coincidentally over her chest instead, showing just enough skin to maintain the PG-13 rating. Her hair would be just the perfect amount of messy and beautiful, and she would look flawless in the morning. Their clothes must be discarded on the floor, in haphazard, yet somehow composed piles. The tell-tale items of a lustful night would be in plain sight: boxers, panty, bra.

“I don’t know why you’re naked.” _______ stated plainly. “That’s what you wanted last night and you wouldn’t go back to your own room. I couldn’t let you run around the building. I was very tired.” Her voice was muffled and groggy. Elliot wanted to put his clothes back on, but if he got up to find them, she’d see.

_Fuck, she probably already saw everything last night. What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m a goddamn basket case._

_______ pulled the blanket off of her side and crawled out of bed. He heard her walking a few steps before she grunted, picking something off the floor. _Maybe it’s a gun and she was waiting all this time to blow my brains out. I deserve this._ But there was quiet rustling, like fabric. When a soft thud hit the middle of his chest, Elliot could tell it was his clothes. He felt _______ crawl back into bed.

“Good… night…” she was yawning. _She’s serious_ , he realized. Elliot’s arms and legs were numb. His mind was racing, but he couldn't find the will to move. _Have you ever had sleep paralysis_ _?_  No matter what he did, he couldn't get himself to snap out of it. After lying completely still in utter agony and fear for 15 minutes, he finally pulled one trembling hand out from his side onto the pile of clothes. On the very top, folded neatly into a small square were his boxers. He could see the gingham pattern through the darkness.

A guffaw escaped him at first in a soft hush, echoing throughout the room. He wanted to stop, he really did, but the absurdity of it all was too much- he could feel it growing louder. Elliot couldn’t help but howl with laughter.


	5. October 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope the timeline isn't confusing anyone, but to clarify, February is the most current month in the timeline. October came first, it's when the reader moved in.

October 12th

“Why aren’t you listening to me?”

Elliot blinked at the snapping fingers in front of his face. Angela had her arms crossed as she stood next to his desk. If she were anyone else, maybe she’d lean over and prop herself on the edge of it, but Angela wouldn’t ever be caught doing something like that. Her nude heels squeaked against each other as she impatiently adjusted her footing.

“Sorry,” Elliot weakly supplied, “I don’t think I can make it tonight,”

Angela’s frown deepened, “You never go, Elliot. It’s just a movie with a few of my friends; you don’t have to even talk to anyone- that’s why I invited you. I _know_ they’ll like you.”

“Thanks, I think…” Elliot knew she was trying to help, but he wasn’t sure if there was a compliment or insult that he should have been looking for in that statement. He _wanted_ to say yes, but the thought of meeting 5 pairs of eyes outside of the ticket box lodged the agreeance right in his throat.

“What are you going to do tonight anyway? Elliot, it makes me sad to think that you just go home into your apartment and do nothing until tomorrow. You don’t talk to _anybody_.”

 _That’s not true, Angela,_ he wanted to say, _I actually talk **myself** through the very relaxing process grinding morphine up into dust and snorting it._ _Then, I hack all of your friends and look at their mundane lives full of lies and nothingness and then I think critically about my own life full of lies and nothingness. It’s wonderful._

Angela was rubbing a clear balm over her lips now. “If you change your mind, call me.” She sighed finally, seeing Gideon’s figure open the door. “I have to go talk to Gideon--- just, think about it, okay?” Popping the lid back on the chapstick, she gave Elliot one final pointed look before heading across the floor. Elliot could see her glancing back at him with concern, which she always did every time he turned down a social offer. He would always give her a strained smile back, as if to say _, it’s okay, I’m not going to die_. It was like their special little language.

He turned back to his monitor and shut the system down before grabbing the rest of his things. Elliot slipped the hoodie back on and zipped it up comfortably, sighing as he felt himself relax again within his shell.

The ride home on the subway was as usual: boring. The walk home was also uneventful. Perhaps there was one less dead rat than usual, which somewhat made his day a little better. For some reason, Krista’s voice from yesterday’s session was bothering him. Adding to it, was Angela’s chiding comment: _You don’t even talk to anybody_. Well, so what, Angela. Shit.

“Shit!”

Elliot snapped up, hearing a familiar voice cussing. It was her. The girl from yesterday. _Fuck, what was her name?_ He wanted to ask, but before he realized it, she was running past him straight from the door, bag stuffed with clothes in one hand and phone in the other.

He thought it was strange that it was vibrating the whole time. When she caught a cab halfway down the street, he continued to watch as the car rolled past. From her faint image through the dirty window of the backseat, he saw her wipe her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

Elliot decided it was time.

It was easy getting into her wifi. Elliot watched the screen decode the password as he shoved a slice of cold pizza into his mouth. He browsed her internet search history- nothing important, local news, global news, CNN, NPR, FOX, she spent a lot of time reading articles about homicides, random violence, police shootings, but who didn’t? There was some sick part inside all of us that thrived off that darkness, Elliot thought, that’s why all those procedural cop shows were so damn popular. Watching episode after episode of women being countlessly brutalized was just another day on channel 24.

She browsed Netflix a lot. Her average time looking for something to watch before putting on another nature documentary was 15 minutes. She watched music videos, she played games, she looked at porn, she looked at articles about… knitting, cooking, plants, welding, the average showerhead’s water pressure, serial killers, baby marine animals, biblical scripture, news about space exploration, recently passed legislature, obscure contemporary painters, how long cockroaches lives without heads…. her history was all over the place. Her shopping was normal too- a lot of vitamins and supplements, herbal teas, clothes, she didn’t splurge, and her bank account was relatively meager. Just your average 20-something-year-old living alone in New York without daddy money.

Elliot’s pointer hovered over the mouse for a second before he found it. Ikarus.  
She had a personal blog under the handle “Ikarus”.

Elliot looked on, Icarus with a K, likely someone had taken the original. He scrolled page after page, skimming the writings and sketches. They dated back about 5 years in total, and the consistency of her updates varied. It seemed like her most active time was 4 years ago, until she stopped posting for about weeks at a time. Her last post was around the beginning of August. Elliot chewed on a piece of gummy cheese thoughtfully as the screen glowed against his eyes.

“August 5th: There it is. I hit the proverbial wall and…. Guess what happens when you fly too close? Take care.”

He re-read it again and again. What was the wall? Where did she get too close to? The blog itself flashed on a loop in his brain.­ The posts leading up to the last one were all normal- articles, psychology, meditation techniques posted next to links of the latest chapters of her favorite online writings. There were segments of published poetry from various artists, and she drew women looking melancholy on the subway. His favorite was of a young girl holding her mother’s hand; it reminded him of Angela.

A muffled slam from down the hall caught his attention. Elliot looked to the clock at the bottom of his screen. 5 hours had already passed. Footsteps were pounding down toward him and he heard the rattling of keys falling out of someone’s pocket. Seconds later, a door opened and slammed shut again.

Elliot sat again in silence before turning back to his monitor.  
_Shit, five hours_.

The paper plate that previously held his pizza still had a piece of crust lounging on it, the grease of its previous tenant soaking through, changing white to brown. Elliot sighed, maybe it was time for bed. It was around midnight anyway, and it always made him feel better when he hacked someone. It took away some of the desire for morphine. No matter how trivial the information, his loneliness always subsided temporarily.

Elliot yawned softly. He thought it was strange, however, that the girl didn’t have any social media accounts. He could probably dig up old ones if he knew her name, but she never logged into anything other than her blog for a few minutes. Her e-mail accounts were all full of spam. Nothing personal. Even the name on her e-mails were false.

Elliot’s hand went to cup his mouse. He moved the pointer again to the x at the top right of the screen. Out of sheer habit, he looked over to her history. Pages were loading right before his eyes and Elliot found a lump lodged directly in his throat.

_Restraining order_   
_Identity change_   
_Shelters near me_   
_Suicide hotline_

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)


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